Tuesday, May 22, 2012

Congratulations to our Dhaka / Engineers for a Sustainable World project team (http://stanforddhakawater.wordpress.com/#), who were awarded a first place win and
a $20k prize this evening in the Social Entrepreneurship Challenge
sponsored by BASES (Business Association of Stanford Entrepreneurial
Students)!

This recognition comes on the heels of the team being recommended for an EPA P3 grant for their work earlier this month.

The
team has been working very hard over the past two quarters to develop
an in-line chlorinator appropriate for low-income urban neighborhoods
that rely on shared water points for their drinking water supply. This
summer they will field test their prototype in the slums of Dhaka,
Bangladesh, in collaboration with the International Center for Diarrheal
Disease Research. Their technology has the potential to benefit not
only the 10 million slum dwellers of Dhaka, but the half a billion urban
residents worldwide whose piped networks deliver water rendered unsafe
by biological contamination.

Sunday, May 13, 2012

Delhi has its own "Great Stink"

Roughly 150 years ago, the House of Commons in London's Parliament had to be evacuated because of the foul odors emanating from the River Thames on whose banks the houses of Parliament were built. Subsequent fallout from this "Great Stink," as it came to be known, as well as from recurrent cholera epidemics, eventually resulted in the construction of the London sewer system.

Today the BBC is reporting that India's upper house of parliament was similarly evacuated, also because of poor management of human wastes. Although not nearly as dramatic as the London case, perhaps this experience will spur lawmakers in India to take a hard look at the fact that half of the country's population lacks access to even the most basic form of sanitation!